Cornplanter

Cornplanter (1752-18 February 1836) was a war chief of the Seneca during the French and Indian War and American Revolutionary War, fighting as an ally of Great Britain in both wars.

Biography
Cornplanter was born in 1752 in Canawaugus, New York, the son of Dutch man Johannes Abeel and his Seneca wife; he was named "John". He had the Indian name of "Cornplanter", and he was a war chief during the French and Indian War, during which he sided with Great Britain against the Kingdom of France. Cornplanter was friendly with the British, inviting Quakers to bring farming to the Seneca and opposing the consumption of liquor. Cornplanter would again take up arms with the British during the American Revolutionary War, although he had initially sought to maintain the Iroquois Confederacy's neutrality during the war. Cornplanter assisted John Butler in the 1778 Wyoming Massacre of American settlers and later the Cherry Valley Massacre, and his forces were defeated by the Americans at the Battle of Newtown during the Sullivan Expedition. During the massacre, Cornplanter happened to capture his own father, and his father chose to go back to his white family rather than join the Indians, so Cornplanter had him escorted back home. After the war, he met with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and negotiated the neutrality of the Iroquois in the Northwest Indian War. He died at the age of 84 in 1836.